[Korean Textbook Reviews] Yonsei Korean Reading 6

I realised that I’m more motivated to do reviews when people request for them 😀

The Yonsei Korean Reading series (연세 한국어 읽기) consists of 6 books (Level 1-6) and are used in Yonsei’s KLI classes together with the Yonsei Korean series that I’ve reviewed some time back. The following review is for the Level 6 book (the only one I own now), so some of the content may not be applicable to the other books (:

As usual, for a succinct review, scroll down to the bottom of the post! ^^

The ‘main text’ in the Yonsei Korean series are dialogues while in the reading series, they are really… long texts. It really trains your reading ability as you are confronted with long excerpts of texts taken from books etc. These texts are usually more challenging than those specially written for the foreign language learner.

I like how textbooks try to incorporate culture into the learning process, but some books just come off as… terribly boring. The Yonsei reading book is different, and I love the aspects of culture they bring into the readings. They have passages that introduces the famous mountains of Korea in the form of a travel log, the 길거리 문화 (street culture) of Korea, and passages on using movies to understand Korea. I really appreciate the effort put in to choose each and every passage. They vary the styles of the text too: argumentative essays, travel log, narration, poems etc. This allows us to get exposed to a wide range of texts.

Breakdown of a chapter:

introduction exercise

main text

exercises on new vocabulary

comprehension exercises

additional related passage

Very neat and useful.

The one thing I loved about the book is the accompanied CD. They contain the mp3 tracks of all the main reading texts and I find that exceptionally helpful when it comes to familiarising myself with the intonation contours, the pronunciation of certain words, the stresses, the pauses etc. It also serves as a very good listening training tool. I’ll recommend that you listen to the track before looking at the text itself, and see how much you can grasp from the audio.

I don’t have much gripes about the book, but I feel that it might be a little difficult for self studying. I could feel the difference: completing a chapter with the 선생님 and completing a chapter by myself.
Speed-wise, understanding-wise.

19 Comments

I’ve only seen this book online but never on shelves at bookstores. I only have Yonsei’s Thematic Korean Reading 4 & 5. This one is really interesting. There’s like a lot of Yonsei books out there so I’m quite confused on what to use since they also have different contents.
Thanks for the review!! Makes me want to buy this book but a lower level.

lyrynne

6 March, 2011 at 6:13 PM

I think so. They have really long passages, well for 4 & 5 I’m not sure with lower levels. It also has some activity where you have to write about your thoughts about the passage and new vocabs explained in Korean.

Courtney

6 March, 2011 at 9:09 AM

I’m looking for some intermediate reading material—but not advanced intermediate. I’m wondering if I should order book 2 or book 3. Any suggestions??? (Oh, and a super thanks for the review. You’re so fast and so generous with your time! Much appreciated.)

Courtney

6 March, 2011 at 12:23 PM

Oh, I forgot to ask: does the book have a glossary, and if so, is it decent? That’s my biggest complaint about Sogang, their glossaries are very minimal so I spend a lot of time with my dictionaries. They never define new words that they are introducing in each chapter; it’s always a “look them up yourself” situation.

Anonymous

[…] is that the school is switching over to Yonsei University Textbooks (which I raved about HERE and HERE) slowly from level 1 onwards. I find Yonsei textbooks more challenging in all aspects compared to […]

Saadia

Latchimi

23 May, 2014 at 12:19 PM

Yonsei reading books looks interesting. I may wanna get the lower level cos I am actually looking for books to read, Even if I don’t understand the content now, I may later as I progress. Haha. I wish I do progress. Thanks for recommending twochois cos I can acually see some pages (enlarged) of the books to get a rough idea of the books.

[…] University Press publishes such great Korean reading textbooks. Blogged about the Yonsei Korean Reading Level 6 book in 2011 (9 years ago omg?!) and till date it’s still one of my favourite textbook series for […]